Publication Date:
2003-07-26
Description:
It is well known that hunting dramatically reduced all baleen whale populations, yet reliable estimates of former whale abundances are elusive. Based on coalescent models for mitochondrial DNA sequence variation, the genetic diversity of North Atlantic whales suggests population sizes of approximately 240,000 humpback, 360,000 fin, and 265,000 minke whales. Estimates for fin and humpback whales are far greater than those previously calculated for prewhaling populations and 6 to 20 times higher than present-day population estimates. Such discrepancies suggest the need for a quantitative reevaluation of historical whale populations and a fundamental revision in our conception of the natural state of the oceans.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Roman, Joe -- Palumbi, Stephen R -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2003 Jul 25;301(5632):508-10.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, 16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12881568" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Atlantic Ocean
;
Base Sequence
;
Conservation of Natural Resources
;
DNA, Mitochondrial/genetics
;
*Ecosystem
;
Female
;
Genetic Variation
;
Genetics, Population
;
Male
;
Molecular Sequence Data
;
Population Density
;
Population Dynamics
;
Time Factors
;
*Whales/classification/genetics
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
